When the Met Gala committee announced that billionaire Jeff Bezos would co-host the 2026 Gala, activist groups began protesting and several big names refused invitations to the event. New York City’s mayor, democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani, joined the boycott, citing his commitment to creating “affordability” for ordinary New Yorkers (by taxing the richest residents). The irony of protesting the existence of billionaires by not attending an event where tickets go for nearly $100,000 unfortunately seemed to escape most people.

This thirst for absolute economic equality has helped socialist politicians like Mamdani gain traction. What’s more, a Frenchman who visited America nearly 200 years ago predicted it.

Alexis de Tocqueville was born on July 29, 1805. Tocqueville followed in his great-grandfather’s footsteps as a French statesman, entering public service as an apprentice magistrate.

In 1831, Tocqueville and a friend traveled to America to study its penitentiary system. Tocqueville’s status as an outsider helped him analyze the unique political and social situation enjoyed by Americans, resulting in his famous “Democracy in America.”

Tocqueville believed that American society was characterized by a general equality of conditions, which he called “democracy.” Democracy began as a social state since America did not have an aristocracy rooted in birth like the European nations did. This equality eventually extended into political life as well.

During the time of Tocqueville’s visit to America, Andrew Jackson was in his first term as president. Under Jackson’s presidency, American politics became far more democratized, as more states dropped property requirements for voting. By the 1840 election, 80% of white males in the United States had gained the vote.

It was in this context that Tocqueville gathered his material for “Democracy in America.” One of his central concerns was that democratic societies tend to value equality more than freedom, though equality does not guarantee freedom. Equality exists in despotic societies as well as free ones; beneath the tyrant, everyone is equal.

Because of their overpowering desire for complete equality, envy – or “resentment or sadness at another’s good fortune or excellence,” according to Encyclopedia Britannica – is one of the greatest weaknesses of democratic societies. Citizens tend to view those who hold more status, wealth, or influence than themselves as threats to equality, and thus threats to democracy. In democratic societies like America there exists “a depraved taste for equality in the human heart that brings the weak to want to draw the strong to their level and that reduces men to preferring equality in servitude to inequality in freedom,” Tocqueville wrote.

C. S. Lewis observed this same trend in his satirical short story, “Screwtape Proposes a Toast.” Senior tempter Screwtape, in an address to the Tempters’ Training College, outlines the greatest success of “Our Father Below” during the first half of the 20th century. Screwtape rejoices in the “movement towards the discrediting, and finally the elimination, of every kind of human excellence – moral, cultural, social, or intellectual” that has taken place. Better yet, he says, this work is being accomplished through “democracy,” giving people an excuse to practice the sin of envy by making it seem respectable. To envy another man on a personal level is shameful, but to accuse him of being “undemocratic” because he refuses to bring himself down to the level of his fellow citizens is noble.

Marxist thought is the ultimate expression of this democratic envy. It divides people into two classes: the oppressed and the oppressors. The oppressed class is encouraged to cultivate a spirit of envy that culminates in revolution, as they overthrow the oppressors and take power for themselves.

“Now, this useful phenomenon is in itself by no means new,” Screwtape explains, continuing:

Under the name of Envy, it has been known to humans for thousands of years. But hitherto they always regarded it as the most odious, and also the most comical of vices. Those who were aware of feeling it felt it with shame; those who were not gave it no quarter in others. The delightful novelty of the present situation is that you can sanction it – make it respectable and even laudable – by the incantatory use of the word democratic.

This describes recent developments toward socialism and DEI initiatives on the political left. Democratic socialism and its promise of taxing the rich to pay for the poor is a rather obvious expression of this spirit of envy. DEI also upholds democratic envy through its artificial creation of equality by rejecting qualification in favor of “diversity.”

The right is not immune from this way of thinking either. A recent example is seen through the “woke right’s” painting of white conservative Christians as a victimized group that must throw off the oppression of Jews and other ethnic groups, a move which merely inverts the Marxist categories used by the left. If conservatives are to succeed in taking back America from the encroachments of Marxism, they must avoid this way of thinking.

Tocqueville knew that the desire for equality even at the price of freedom would be the Achilles’ heel of American democracy if not held in check. The state of America today seems to confirm his predictions.

But it is not too late to exorcise the spirit of envy. The antidote to envy is gratitude, a virtue practiced often during our country’s history. The Continental Congress, for example, declared national days of thanksgiving and prayer following the end of the War for Independence and the enactment of the U.S. Constitution. Presidents George Washington, John Adams, and James Madison all made similar proclamations at various times in their presidencies. Then, in 1863, President Lincoln began the tradition of Thanksgiving, celebrated on the last Thursday of November.

Our forefathers understood the importance of gratitude for the blessings bestowed by the Creator. If we are to resist envy’s takeover, we must do the same.

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This article was made possible by The Fred & Rheta Skelton Center for Cultural Renewal.

Image credit: Gabriel S. Delgado C., CC BY 2.0